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Pure Excess

Capitalism and the Commodity
  • Todd McGowan
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2024
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About this book

Todd McGowan forges a new theory of capitalism as a system based on the production of more than what we need: pure excess.

Author / Editor information

Todd McGowan teaches theory and film at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Embracing Alienation, The Racist Fantasy, Emancipation After Hegel, Capitalism and Desire, and Only a Joke Can Save Us, among other books. He is also the cohost of the Why Theory podcast with Ryan Engley.

Reviews

Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism:
This crystalline study perfects the psychoanalytic critique of contemporary omnicrisis. As Todd McGowan builds a new analysis of the place of aesthetic form in a culture of excess, he shows how art’s constraints model an excess attained through rather than despite lack, and thus educate anticapitalist desire.

Alenka Zupančič, author of What IS Sex?:
In his latest groundbreaking work, Todd McGowan provides a thrilling examination of the nature of excess in capitalism. Much more than a critical analysis of capitalism, this book also reveals the anticapitalist potential of art and the aesthetic form.

Slavoj Žižek:
For years McGowan has worked to understand the core mechanism of the libidinal economy that sustains capitalism. With Pure Excess, we finally have the definitive formulation. He condenses deep paradoxes: capitalism produces pure excess even when most people cannot satisfy their basic needs. This book is obligatory reading for everyone who wants to understand the global crisis we are in.


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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 20, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780231561808
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Downloaded on 17.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.7312/mcgo21758/html
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